Science Programs Open Doors For Minorities

Thirteen-year-old Reginald Hansbrough usually spends his weekends watching basketball on TV or playing with friends.

But in the coming Saturdays, the Naperville teen hopes to trade TV and playtime for science and math.

Hansbrough was one of more than 600 Chicago-area elementary and high school students who attended the first-ever conference aimed at encouraging African-American and Hispanic youths to pursue careers in science, math and engineering.

"All of the (future) jobs will require a lot more thinking, problem-solving and communicating," Len Dominguez, Chicago's deputy mayor for education, told students before they headed to recruiting booths to learn more about the programs offered this year.

The Saturday morning conference, held at Mundelein College on Sheridan Road, was sponsored by Access 2000, a public-private partnership involving the Chicago public schools, universities, businesses and community agencies.

"Working with computers and learning about science is not a chore for me," said Hansbrough, an 8th grader at Hill Middle School in Naperville. "I'm willing to give up my Saturdays for it."

Access 2000 was launched in 1988 by Eric Hamilton, an associate professor of mathematical sciences at Loyola University, and professors at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University. The project offers about 40 precollegiate science and math programs to 5th through 11th graders.

The programs are offered at Chicago State University, Northwestern University, the Chicago Academy of Sciences, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Loyola University, the Illinois Institute of Technology, the University of Chicago, Argonne National Laboratory and Fermilab in Batavia.

The programs are administered during the school year, on Saturdays and in the summer and are from two days to one year. Some offer stipends while others offer high school course credit.

"There are severe shortages" expected in the science and math fields, Hamilton said. "Our goal is to get as many of these youngsters interested so there won't be a shortfall."

Quincy Fountain, a 16-year-old junior at Englewood High School on the South Side, participated in one of the summer programs last year that allowed him to work in a computer lab in Batavia and take classes in electronics, biology and photography, he said. He said he was paid $140 a week.

"It expanded my knowledge of computers and other things," he said, adding that one day he hopes to be a chemist or a member of the cancer research team at the University of Chicago.